BOOK 2

  CHAPTER 16

  Flying Lessons

  “Lilly!” Bash called. “You ready to give me more flying lessons?”

  A black shape swooped down from the sky, landing on a nearby post. Lilly’s feathers puffed with excitement as she spoke. “Yes! I love flying!”

  Bash concentrated. Felt the magic stir. Started to rise. He wobbled. Tilted. Overcorrected. “Oh crap!”

  He flipped one hundred eighty degrees and crashed headfirst into the ground. He pushed himself up, dirt in his mouth. “Why is this so hard?”

  Lilly screeched. “You are doing it wrong! You have to follow the air!”

  “Yes, I know. You’ve said that like a hundred times.” He spat out a pebble. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  Shai materialized above him, hovering effortlessly. Looking down with an expression that managed to be both helpful and condescending. “What she means is that you are a sailboat. You cannot sail against the wind unless you cut at an angle.”

  Lilly hopped up and down. “Yes! Cut the wind!”

  Bash threw his hands up. “What the f...” He glanced at Lilly and bit off the curse. “...wind are you talking about? I don’t see any wind!”

  Lilly ruffled her feathers and stretched her wings. “You don’t see it. You feel it.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You have feathers!” Bash complained.

  Lilly cocked her head, thinking. Then she hopped excitedly. “Take your armor off! You will feel the wind better without clothes on!”

  “Oh for... Shard sake.” This not-cursing-in-front-of-children thing was hard. He looked at Shai. “Help me out here. What does the math say?”

  Shai’s expression went flat. Robotic. “Processing request. Analyzing available data. Flight trajectory optimization requires sensory input calibration. Recommended action: remove obstructive garments. Probability of success improvement: seventeen point three percent. This unit awaits further instructions.”

  Bash groaned. “No. No, Shai. We talked about this.”

  Lilly broke in. “Stop fighting! I don’t like it when you fight!”

  Bash and Shai both looked at her. She had shrunk in on herself, wings pressed flat against her body. Then they looked at each other.

  “We aren’t really fighting, Lilly,” Bash said gently. “This is just how we show each other we care. Right, Shai?”

  Shai nodded. She drifted over to Lilly’s and stroked her feathers. Her hand didn’t phase through this time. She was getting really good at the physical touch thing.

  “Yes, Lilly. We are just showing each other love.” Her voice dripped with sweetness. “Like how Bash says he loves me, but then does the opposite of that. And I show him love by telling him he’s dumb.”

  Lilly laughed. “Yeah. He is a dumb. Nora says that too!”

  Bash scoffed. “I’m not the one who made the other person jump off a cliff and break every bone in their body.”

  Lilly turned to him. “That wouldn’t have happened if you would just learn to fly! Like I’ve been telling you!”

  Shai nodded sagely. “Yeah, Bash. Like she told you.”

  “Oh, this isn’t fair. You two are teaming up on me.” He threw his hands up in surrender. “Fine! I’ll take the shirt off. But not the pants!”

  He stripped off his jerkin and leather armor, letting them fall to the ground. The air moved over his bare skin, cool and constant.

  For a moment, he just stood there. Concentrated. Felt the wind as it brushed against his chest, his arms, his back.

  He started to hover. The current pushed at him from behind. He followed it. Let it carry him. When it shifted to his front, he drifted backward. When it pressed his right side, he moved left. He stopped fighting and started flowing.

  Eyes still closed, he rose higher. The wind became his guide. Push and pull. Give and take.

  He opened his eyes. “See? I’m doing it! I’m flying!”

  He was fifty feet above the ground.

  Vertigo kicked and he world begun to spin. Up became down. Left became right. “Oh god!”

  He threw up on himself mid flight, vomit spewing in every direction. The flight spell disrupted and he plummeted.

  Shai appeared beneath him, hands outstretched. She caught him, slowed his fall, held him for almost three seconds before her grip lost cohesion and he phased through.

  He slammed into the ground. Hard enough to hurt, but not to kill. Laying there, he let out a groan. He was covered in dirt and vomit. Staring up at the sky he had just fallen out of.

  [Skill Improved! Flight Magic | +4 to All Stats]

  “Yay,” he wheezed, giving a weak thumbs up to no one in particular.

  Lilly hopped onto his back and started poking at his ear with her beak. “You are so bad at this, Bash. So bad. So bad.”

  Something about it broke him. The absurdity of it all. The vomit. The fall. A bird critiquing his life choices.

  He started laughing. Couldn’t stop. Just lay there in the dirt, shaking with it.

  When he finally caught his breath, he propped himself up on his elbows. Shai was still there, hovering nearby, watching him. “Shai.” His voice was quieter. “I will do better. You know that, right?”

  Shai smiled “I know. Now try again.”

  ***

  The air two hundred feet up was colder than Bash expected.

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  He drifted along, arms out for balance, trying not to think about how far away the ground was. The flight spell hummed through him, keeping him aloft, but it far from steady. Every few seconds the magic would hiccup and he’d drop five or ten feet without warning. His stomach lurched each time. His hands went clammy. Some deep animal part of his brain screamed that he wasn’t supposed to be up here.

  He ignored it. Mostly.

  Lilly circled him lazily, riding the thermals with an ease that made him want to scream.

  “Faster, Bash!” She banked around him. “Go faster! You are so slow!”

  “I’m working on it,” he muttered.

  Another drop. His stomach flipped. He forced himself to breathe and refocus.

  Lilly swooped closer, matching his pace. For a while they just floated together in silence. The village spread out below them, small and fragile. Workers moved like ants along the walls. Smoke rose from the cooking fires.

  It looked peaceful from up here. Almost safe.

  “Hey, Lilly.” He glanced over at her. Black feathers catching the sunlight. Little raven eyes bright and curious. “I’m going to miss you.”

  Silence.

  Bash looked over again. Lilly was still coasting beside him, but something had changed. Her wings moved mechanically. Her head hung lower. She looked... sad. In whatever way birds could look sad.

  “Why can’t I come with you?” She asked.

  “It’s dangerous,” he said carefully. “You know that. That wind mage almost got you. You’ve been hurt before.”

  “But I fought with you against the skeletons!” Her wings beat harder, agitated. “Remember? I was there! I helped!”

  “Yes, Lilly. But that was different. We had no choice.” Bash’s voice came out harsher than he intended. “We either won or died. There was no running. No retreat. This... this is us walking into danger on purpose. That’s different.”

  Lilly went quiet. They drifted for a long moment, the wind the only sound between them. When she spoke again, her voice was smaller. Older somehow. “It’s because of Patrick. Isn’t it?”

  Bash felt something twist in his chest.

  “You’ve been trying so hard since he died.” She wasn’t looking at him now. Just staring ahead at the mountains. “You’re scared you’ll lose someone else.”

  He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. “How old are you again?” he finally managed.

  “I’m eleven!” She proclaimed it proudly.

  Bash smiled despite himself. “Right. You are very smart you know that?”

  “Catch me if you can, slow poke!” And just like that, she banked hard and shot forward, wings pumping, shrinking into a black speck against the blue sky.

  “Lilly, wait!” Bash shout after her, but she was already gone. Racing toward the mountains like she hadn’t just gut-punched him with an emotional truth bomb. Damn kids.

  Bash pushed forward. Tried to follow. The wind pressed back against his chest like a wall, while Lilly cut through the air like she was born for it. Cut the wind, he thought.

  He angled his body. Tried to find the current instead of fighting it. Gained a little speed. Lost it when he failed to anticipate a change in direction. Gained it again.

  Lilly was a dot now. A tiny black smudge against the gray mountainside.

  Something else moved. Something big. It came from above, dropping out of a cloud bank. Wings twice the span of a horse. A body covered in mottled gray and brown feathers. A hooked beak the size of Bash’s torso. Talons like curved swords and it was diving. Straight at Lilly.

  > “Bash!” Shai’s voice exploded in his mind. “Gryphon! It’s going after Lilly!”

  He could tell the moment Lilly noticed it, saw her wings falter for just a moment, before she tucked and dove, plummeting toward the trees below.

  The gryphon matched her. Faster and Bigger.

  Bash tried to fly harder, but it wasn’t working.

  He pushed against the wind and the wind pushed back. Every foot of progress was a strain, the magic wanted him to flow, to drift, to coast. He needed to sprint.

  Lilly jinked left. The gryphon followed. She rolled right. It was still there. She was running out of tricks.

  > “Bash, you have to do something!”

  “COME ON!!!” He screamed and triggered everything at once. Prediction. Investagor. Reflex Surge. Psionic Strike. All pushed to their absolute limits. Every skill he had, all at the same time, consequences be damned.

  His mind exploded with input. Prediction showed him the gryphon’s trajectory, the arc of its dive, exactly where its talons would close around Lilly in Five seconds

  Investigator showed him the air currents, rivers of fast-moving wind snaking through the sky like invisible highways. Four Seconds.

  Reflex Surge sharpened everything to crystal clarity. Every wingbeat distinct. Every feather on the gryphon’s body rendered in perfect detail. Time stretched giving him forever to watch and more time to act. Three seconds.

  Still Not enough. Not fast enough. Psionic Strike answered. Bash attacked the air behind him with everything he had, setting of a an explosion. Two seconds.

  Red lightning erupted backwards from his fist and the world blurred. G-forces crushed his chest. His vision went red, then white, then collapsed to a single point. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Could only watch the tunnel of light with Lilly at the end of it and the gryphon’s talons inches from her tail feathers. One second.

  The Gryphon filled his vision. Massive. Terrible. Talons inches from Lilly’s tail feathers. Zero.

  Bash hit it head first, like a missile. He didn’t punch through it so much as detonate inside it. Psionic energy discharged on impact, tearing through meat and bone and feather. The creature came apart around him in a puff of blood and viscera.

  Bash came out the other side covered in the creature’s insides, tumbling end over end, completely out of control.

  The ground was rushing up.

  He tried to right himself. Tried to find a current. Tried to remember how to fly, punched wildly, psionic strikes thrusting him in all the wrong directions. The mountainside filled his vision. Rocks. Trees. A creek that looked very small and was getting very big. Not again...

  Impact.

  Lilly

  Lilly loved flying. She loved how the wind held her up. How it moved around her wings. She loved how the ground looked so small from up high, and how the clouds looked close enough to touch.

  Flying with Bash was even better. Even if he was slow. Even if he kept doing it wrong. Even when he as sad.

  She circled back to him, watching him struggle. He pushed against the air instead of letting it carry him. He fought everything. He always fought everything.

  “Faster, Bash! Go faster!” She told him, but he never listened. She tried not to think about how different he was now. How the laughing had stopped.

  Before Patrick, Bash smiled all the time. Now his smiles looked like they hurt.

  “I’m going to miss you,” he said.

  The words didn’t make sense. He just got back. “Why was he already talking about leaving? Why couldn’t she go too?” She asked. He gave the same answers the adults always gave. Danger. Too risky. You might get hurt.

  Like she hadn’t fought skeletons. Like she hadn’t dropped rocks on monsters. Like she was still just a baby bird who couldn’t do anything.

  “It’s because of Patrick. Isn’t it?” She didn’t mean to say it. It just came out.

  Bash went quiet. Really quiet. The kind of quiet that meant she had found something true.

  “How old are you again?” He asked her

  “I’m eleven!” She puffed up. Eleven was almost grown up. Eleven was old enough to help.

  Bash smiled. A real smile, not a hurting one.

  That was better. She knew what would help, they should play tag. “Catch me if you can, slow poke!”

  She shot forward before he could say anything else. The wind grabbed her and pulled her along. Fast. Free. This was what flying was supposed to feel like.

  She laughed. For a moment, everything was okay again. Then the sky got darker. A shadow fell over her. Big. Wrong. She looked up. The gryphon.

  She had seen it the day before, hunting in the peaks. Tearing through eagles like they were nothing. She had meant to tell someone. She had forgotten.

  It was diving straight at her.

  Lilly’s wings locked. For one terrible second she couldn’t move at all. Then instinct took over.

  She tucked and dropped. The wind screamed past her. Branches blurred below. She twisted left. The gryphon followed. She rolled right. Still there. Still coming.

  Its shadow covered her completely now. She could hear its wings. Could hear the air splitting around its talons.

  “Bash!” Her voice came out tiny. “BASH, HELP!”

  Nothing happened. She was alone.

  The talons were so close she could see the curve of them. Could see the scratches in the bone-colored surface. This was it. This was goodbye.

  Light exploded behind her. Red. Blinding. A shockwave slammed into her and sent her spinning. Feathers ripped loose. The world tumbled. Sky. Ground. Sky. Ground.

  She caught herself, spreading her wings. Blinked through the dizziness.

  Where the gryphon had been, there was only red mist and falling pieces. And Bash. He was falling too. He wasn’t flying. Wasn’t even trying. Just tumbling. Arms and legs everywhere.

  “Bash!” She dove after him. “You’re doing it wrong!”

  He hit the trees. The sound was bad. Crunching and snapping and then nothing.

  Lilly circled the spot where he disappeared. Once. Twice. Her heart was beating so fast it hurt.

  Nothing moved. ‘Oh no. Oh no that was bad. So so bad.’

  Something below was glowing and she heard a groan. Lilly folded her wings and dropped through the canopy.